4 out of 5

Director: Gore Verbinski

Yeah, why not. I liked it better than the first one. You probably won’t. But listen anyway: Pirates 2, Dead Man’s Chest takes the positive aspects of the first installment – a solid cast, well-paced direction, polished dialogue – and gives it a bit of a shove forward into ‘keep ya’ guessing’ territory, which is what I felt the first one lacked. It’s helped to have a set team of writers for the film else it wouldn’t be so easy to summarize the madness: Captain Jack (Depp) is after the heart of Davy Jones, since it gives the owner, essentially control of the sea. Will and Elizabeth are after Jack, and thus also after the heart, ’cause they’re under arrest for their naughtiness from film 1 and Jack’s their bargaining chip. Oh, and Davy Jones is a living, scary fish-man played by Bill Nighy who probably doesn’t want people getting his heart. Now you explain the plot of, like, Transformers, and it sounds just as silly, but by actually weaving the destiny of characters and importance of actions INTO the plot, the Pirates films succeed in making on-screen events seem logical, fun, and good eye candy. The latter portion is all Verbinski – as with film 1, his sense of pacing and framing are still aces. There are some hiccups – the Bruckheimer hand is definitely beginning to show in some of the framing shots, with the big sweeps over location feeling more like “look at me” than integral to involving the audience. But thankfully these happen briefly and lead us to some ridiculously amusing montages. It’s also a sequel, which lends itself to some eye-rolling setup to get the ball rolling, but once it does… it’s totally a trip. The wayward preproduction of Pirates 2 (check out the extras) might show in between key scenes, but it also pushed the team to churn out something with just a notch more originality and momentum than film 1. And the effects on Nighy are AWESOME.